Quote:
Originally Posted by marshall
So this system incentivizes the districts to move to the PNW style model or am I wrong? In that model I believe the district pays FIRST HQ and then the teams pay the district.
Doing that would result in like 90%+ teams having secured funding and thus more teams going on to championships. The district directors (particularly ours) have no qualms about wanting their own teams to be successful at championships and to do that they need to get them there first.
So I don't quite understand this process... It seems to be at odds with some of the stated goals for FIRST.
It seems to incentivize districts with smaller numbers of teams so larger percentages get paid up and thus more of that district's teams go on to play.
It also seems to incentivize districts with teams who can secure funding which means more rural areas that have a harder time getting funding secured are less likely to have more spots. Those same rural teams are more likely to have underserved and minority youths.
I swear I just took some training material about unconscious bias and one of the things I learned was that by looking for students in specific locations and not targeting the whole community we end up getting a less diverse team.
Isn't the same true for the championship events? Don't we end up with a less diverse group of teams by ensuring that only teams that can pay can go? I mean, FRC is inherently unfair but this seems super backwards with the stated goals.
I really don't know how I feel about this. On the surface this doesn't seem quite right. I was more ok with them basing it on the number of teams in each district.
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I'm gonna be honest Marshall, I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. Yes, you're right, it does incentivize the PNW model, but that model has a lot of positives to it, so I'm not sure why that would be a negative.
Second, if you haven't secured funding at this point in the season, it isn't too unreasonable to think that you might not actually play, and furthermore, might not be able to fund a trip to Championship.
Third, yeah, we do end up with a slightly less diverse group of teams at Championship if we don't include the teams who can't pay to go. But Championship has always had an entry fee, which right now is the same as the standard registration. So that really isn't a change from anything else we've been doing. If a team is struggling to pay for their regular event, why would they be able to go to Champs?
To me, this system rewards districts which have already (with less than 25 days left till kickoff) found funding for their teams.